Curse of the Mistwraith

Reassured that the sorcerer had yet to denounce anyone for the illicit visit to the West End market, Lysaer spurred his horse abreast and dared a question: ‘Who are the drifters and why do the people dislike them?’

Asandir glanced significantly at Arithon, who fought with every shred of his attention to keep his mare from crabbing sideways. The company of three departed the instant the half-brothers gained the saddle. Asandir led, and did not add that his choice in horses had been guided by intent; he wanted Arithon kept preoccupied. ‘Since the rebellion which threw down the high kings, the drifters have been nomads. They breed horses in the grasslands of Pasyvier and mostly keep to themselves. The townsmen are wary of them because their ancestors once ruled in West End.’

The party crossed the moss-crusted spans of the Melor River bridge while the mare bounced and clattered and shied to a barrage of playful snorts. Masked by the antics of the dun, Asandir added, ‘There are deep antipathies remaining from times past, and much prejudice. Your accents, as you noticed, allied you with unpopular factions. My purpose in asking you to wait in the wood was to spare you from dangerous misunderstanding.’

Lysaer drew breath to inquire further but the sorcerer forestalled him. ‘Teir’s’Ilessid,’ he said, using an old language term that the prince lacked the knowledge to translate. ‘There are better times for questions and I promise you shall be given all the answers you need. Right now I’m anxious to set distance between the town and ourselves before dark. The drifters are not fools and the folk who saw you will talk. The result might brew up a curiosity far better left to bide until later.’

Lysaer considered this, his hands twisting and twisting in the chestnut’s silken mane. Less than sure of himself since the loss of his heirship, he regarded the dismal, alien landscape, and tried not to smile as his half-brother battled the flighty, scatter-minded dun through one disobedient rumpus after another.

The incessant clatter of her footfalls at first overshadowed Dakar’s moans of returned consciousness. These soon progressed to obscenities, also ignored, until a full-throated yowl of outrage brought the company to a precipitous halt.

A look back showed that the Mad Prophet’s distress was not solely caused by his hangover: tied still to the paint’s saddlebow, Dakar kicked in a red-faced, fish-flop struggle that stemmed from the fact that his cloak had somehow coiled itself around his neck and more peculiarly appeared to be strangling him.

‘Iyats,’ Asandir said shortly, but his mouth turned upward in unmistakable amusement. ‘What folk here most aptly name fiends.’

Dakar swivelled his head and eyes, and with the aggrieved determination of a bound man whose face dangled upside-down, gagged out, ‘You planned this.’

Possessed by an energy sprite native to Athera, the cloak slithered inexorably tighter around his throat. The fullness of the Mad Prophet’s cheeks deepened from red to purple. ‘Tortures of Sithaer, are you just going to watch while I choke?’

Asandir urged his black forward and drew rein with ineffable calmness. ‘I’ve warned you time and again to restrain your emotions when dealing with iyats. Your distress just goads them on to greater mischief.’

Dakar spluttered and gasped through a tightening twist of fabric. ‘That’s fine advice. You aren’t the one under attack.’

As if his sarcasm sparked suggestion, the cloak very suddenly went limp. The whoop as Dakar sucked in a starved breath quite wickedly transformed into laughter as a puddle peeled itself away from the ground and floated upward, precariously suspended in mid air.

While Lysaer and Arithon stared in astonishment, Asandir calmly regarded the churning, muddy liquid that threatened to douse his silver head. Without any change in expression he raised his hand, closed his fingers, then lowered his fist to his knee. As if dragged by invisible force, the iyat-borne puddle followed; until the sorcerer snapped his fist open, and the mass lost cohesion and exploded in a spatter of grit-laden droplets.

Well drenched by the run-off, Dakar uttered a bitten obscenity. ‘That’s unfair,’ he continued on a strained note that stemmed from the fact he was overweight, and sprawled face downward over a saddle that for some while had been galling his belly. ‘You’ve a reputation for quenching fiends and they know it. They don’t go for you in earnest.’

Asandir raised one eyebrow. ‘You make a fine mark for them. You won’t leash your temper. And they know it.’

Dakar squirmed and failed to settle his bulk into a more accommodating position. ‘Are you going to cut me free?’

‘Are you sober enough to stay mounted?’ The sorcerer fixed impervious, silver-grey eyes on his errant apprentice and shook his head. ‘I think it would be appropriate if you spent the next hour contemplating the result of your untimely binge. I found our two guests at large in the horse fair at West End.’

Dakar’s eyes widened like a hurt spaniel’s. ‘Damn, but you’re heartless. Can I be blamed because a pair of newcomers can’t follow direct instructions?’

Asandir gathered the black’s reins. Silent, he slapped the paint’s haunches and passed ahead without turning as the animal lurched into a trot that threatened to explode Dakar’s skull with the after effects of strong drink. Deaf to the moans from his apprentice, Asandir answered Lysaer’s avid question, and assured that the iyat would not be returning to plague them.

‘They feed upon natural energies – fire, falling water, temperature change – that one we left behind is presently quite drained. Unless it finds a thunderstorm, it won’t recover enough charge to cause trouble for several weeks to come.’

The riders continued westward through a damp, grey afternoon. Although they stopped once for a meal of bread and sausage from the supply pack, Dakar was given no reprieve until dusk when the horses were unsaddled and the small hide tents were unfurled from their lashings to make camp. By then exhausted by hours of pleas and imprecations, he settled in a sulk by the campfire and immediately fell asleep. Tired themselves and worn sore by unaccustomed hours in the saddle, Arithon and Lysaer crawled into blankets and listened to the calls of an unfamiliar night bird echo across the marsh.

Despite the long and wearing day, Lysaer lay wide-eyed and wakeful in the dark. Clued by the stillness that Arithon was not sleeping but seated on his bedding with his back to the tentpole, the prince rolled onto his stomach. ‘You think the sorcerer has something more in mind for us than conquest of the Mistwraith, Desh-thiere.’

Arithon turned his head, his expression unseen in the gloom. ‘I’m sure of it.’

Lysaer settled his chin on his fists. The unaccustomed prick of beard stubble made him irritable; tiredly, resignedly, he put aside wishing for his valet and considered the problems of the moment. ‘You sound quite convinced that the fate in question won’t be pleasant.’

Silence. Arithon shifted position; perhaps he shrugged.

Reflexively touched by a spasm of mistrust, Lysaer extended a hand and called on his gift. A star of light gleamed from his palm and brightened the confines of the tent.

Caught by surprise, a stripped expression of longing on his face, Arithon spun away.

Lysaer pushed upright. ‘Ath, what are you thinking about? You’ve noticed the sickly taint the fog has left on this land. In any honour and decency, could you turn away from these people’s need?’

‘No.’ Arithon returned, much too softly. ‘That’s precisely what Asandir is counting on.’

Struck by a haunted confusion not entirely concealed behind Arithon’s words, Lysaer forgot his anger. There must be friends, even family, that the Shadow Master missed beyond the World Gate. Contritely, the prince asked, ‘If you could go anywhere, be anything, do anything you wanted, what would you choose?’

‘Not to go back to Karthan,’ Arithon said obliquely, and discouraged from personal inquiry, Lysaer let the light die.

‘You know,’ the prince said to the darkness, ‘Dakar thinks you’re some sort of criminal, twisted by illicit magic and sworn to corruption of the innocent.’

Arithon laughed softly as a whisper in the night. ‘You might fare better if you believed him.’

‘Why? Wasn’t one trial on charges of piracy enough for you?’ That moment Lysaer wished his small fleck of light still burned. ‘You’re not thinking of defying Asandir, are you?’

Silence and stillness answered. Lysaer swore. Too weary to unravel the contrary conscience that gave rise to Arithon’s moodiness, his half-brother settled back in his blankets and tried not to think of home, or the beloved lady at South Isle who now must seek another suitor. Instead the former prince concentrated on the need in this world and the Mistwraith his new fate bound him to destroy. Eventually he fell asleep.

The following days passed alike, except that Dakar rode astride instead of roped like a bundled roll of clothgoods. The dun mare steadied somewhat as the leagues passed: her bucks and crabsteps and shies arose more in spirited play than from any reaction to fear. But if Arithon had earned a reprieve from her taxing demands, the reserve that had cloaked him since West End did not thaw to the point of speech. Dakar’s scowling distrust toward his presence did not ease, which left the former prince of Amroth the recipient of unending loquacious questions. Hoarse, both from laughter and too much talk, Lysaer regarded his taciturn half-brother and wondered which of them suffered more: Arithon, in his solitude, or himself, subjected to the demands of Dakar’s incessant curiosity.

The road crooked inland and the marsh pools dried up, replaced by meadows of withered wildflowers. Black birds with white-tipped feathers flashed into flight at their passing and partridge called in the thickets. When the party crossed a deep river ford and bypassed the fork that led to the port city of Karfael, Dakar took the opportunity to bemoan the lack of beer as they paused to refill their emptied water jars.

Asandir dried dripping hands and killed the complaint with mention that a merchant caravan fared ahead.

‘Which way is it bound?’ Dakar bounded upright to a gurgle and splash of jounced flasks.

‘Toward Camris, as we are,’ Asandir said. ‘We shall overtake them.’

The Mad Prophet cheerfully forgot to curse his dampened clothing. But although he badgered through the afternoon and half of the night, the sorcerer refused to elaborate.

On the fourth day the roadway swung due east and entered the forest of Westwood. Here the trees rose ancient with years, once majestic as patriarchs, but bearded and bent now under mantling snags of pallid moss. Their crowns were smothered in mist and their boles grown gnarled with vine until five men with joined hands could not have spanned their circumference. Daylight was reduced to a thick, murky twilight alive with the whispered drip of water. Oppressed by a sense of decay on the land, and the unremitting grey of misty weather, no one inclined toward talk. Even Dakar’s chatter subsided to silence.

‘This wood was a merry place once, when sunlight still shone,’ Asandir mused, as if his mage’s perception showed him something that touched off maudlin thoughts.

They passed standing stones with carvings worn until only beaded whorls of lichens held their patterns. Aware that Arithon studied these with intent curiosity, Asandir volunteered an explanation. ‘In times past, creatures who were not human tended these forests. Attuned to the deepest pulses that bind land and soil to Ath’s harmony, they left stones such as these to show what ground and which trees could be taken for man’s use, and which must stay whole to renew the mysteries. Once, the protection of sacred ground was the province of the high king’s justice. Pastures and fields were cut only where the earth could gracefully support them. But now such knowledge is scarce. The name for the guardians who dwelled here meant giants in the old tongue.’ But the huge, gentle beings Asandir described were more clearly a breed of centaurs.

When Lysaer inquired what had become of them, the sorcerer shook his head sorrowfully. ‘The last of the Ilitharis Paravians passed from the land when Desh-thiere swallowed sunlight. Not even Sethvir at Althain Tower knows where they have gone. Athera is the poorer for their loss. The last hope of redeeming their fate lies in the Mistwraith’s defeat.’

Dakar glanced aside and caught Lysaer’s attention with a wink. ‘Small wonder the old races left these parts. No taverns, no beer and wet trees make lousy company.’

Fed up with rain and nights of smoking fires and bedding down on dampened ground, the former prince could almost sympathize. He joined Dakar in questioning the existence of Asandir’s caravan, and was almost caught off-guard when they overtook the fugitive by the wayside.

The man wore brilliant scarlet, which spoiled his attempt to escape notice by the approaching riders. The hem of his garment was sewn with tassels. One of these caught on a briar and flagged the attention of Asandir, who reined up short in the roadway and called immediate reassurance. ‘We’re fellow travellers, not bandits. Why not share our fire if you’re alone?’

‘On that, I had no choice,’ came the chagrined reply. The man spoke rapidly in dialect, his accents less burred than the prevailing variety in West End. Rangy, tall and carrying what looked like a grossly misshapen pack, he stepped out from behind the moss-shagged bole of an oak. ‘A supposedly honest caravan master already relieved me of my mount, so luck has forsaken me anyway.’ He approached at a pained gait that revealed that his boots were causing blisters, and the hand left white-knuckled on his sword hilt betrayed distrust behind his amiable manner.

‘You may also share the road if you can keep up,’ Asandir offered back.

Dakar assessed the oddly bulky pack for the possible presence of spirits, and was first to announce the stranger’s trade. ‘You’re a minstrel!’ he burst out in surprise. ‘By the Wheel man, why are you starving in the wilderness when you could be singing comfortably in a tavern?’

The man did not reply. Close enough now to make out details and faces, he was engrossed by Asandir. ‘I know you,’ he murmured, half awed. He pushed back his hood and a shock of wavy hair spilled over his collar. The revealed face showed a mapwork of laughlines and a stubble of half-grown beard. The eyes were hazel and merry despite the swollen purple weals that marred him, forehead and cheek.

Asandir’s sharpness cut the forest silence like a whiplash. ‘Ath in his mercy, we are come on ill times. Who in this land has dared to abuse a free singer?’

The minstrel touched his battered skin, embarrassed. ‘I sang the wrong ballad. After being stoned from an inn on the coast I should have learned better. Tales of old kingdoms are not appreciated where mayors rule.’ He sighed in stoic dismissal. ‘This last one cost me my horse and left me stranded into the bargain.’

Asandir cast a glance toward Arithon: if argument existed in favour of shouldering responsibility for restoring this world to sun and harmony, here walked misfortune that a fellow musician must understand. Before the sorcerer could emphasize his point, the minstrel raised his trained voice in a mix of diffidence and amazement.

‘Fiend-quencher, matched by none; white-headed, grey-eyed one. Change-bringer, storm-breaker; Asandir, King-maker.’

‘You,’ the minstrel added, and his theatrical gesture encompassed Dakar. ‘You must be the Mad Prophet.’

Aware of a sudden guardedness behind Arithon’s stillness, Asandir responded carefully. ‘I won’t deny your powers of observation, Felirin the Scarlet. But I would urge that you use more caution before speaking your thoughts aloud. There were innocents burned in Karfael last harvest upon suspicion they had harboured a sorcerer.’

‘So I heard.’ The bard shrugged. ‘But I learned my repertory from barbarians and something of their wildness stayed with me.’ He looked up, his swollen face bright with interest. There must be good reason for a Fellowship sorcerer to take to the open roads.’ And his gaze shifted to the half-brothers who travelled in Asandir’s company.

Dakar opened his mouth, quickly silenced by a look from the sorcerer, who interjected, ‘This is no time to be starting rumours in the taverns. And should I be aware of another way into Camris beyond the road through Tornir Peaks?’

Felirin understood a warning when he heard one. He shifted his bundle, prepared to fall into step as the sorcerer’s black started forward; but Arithon abruptly dismounted and offered the reins of the dun.

‘You have blisters,’ he observed, ‘and I have sores from the saddle that an afternoon on foot might improve.’

The excuse was a lie. Dakar knew. He watched the Master’s face and saw the buried edge of something determined; but the shadowed green eyes held their secrets.

Peaks of Tornir

The caravan that had stranded Felirin the bard stayed elusively ahead through the coming days of travel. Dakar diverted his frustration each evening by badgering incessantly for drinking songs. As a result, the campfires through the eastern quarter of Westwood became rowdy as a dockside tavern, and many a nocturnal predator went hungry due to the din. When Dakar became too hoarse to frame an intelligent request, the bard would delve into his store of ancient ballads that told of times before the Mistwraith. When pressed, he admitted he did not believe in the sun as the woodland barbarians did; but lore and legend fascinated him and he collected old tales as a curiosity. None could deny that the melodies set to such fancy were lyrically complex, a dance on fret and string that a musician could devote a lifetime of skill to perform.

As the hills steepened and the winds of increased altitude caused the company to huddle closer to the fire for warmth, more than once Felirin caught Arithon studying his hands as he played. After days of cleverly rebuffed questions Arithon’s fixation with the lyranthe was the only opening the bard had managed to discern. Inspired by a fractional movement of the dark-haired man’s fingers as a fallen log fanned up the flames, Felirin silenced his strings in mid-stanza and rubbed his knuckles on his jerkin. ‘Damn the weather,’ he said.

Dakar predictably complained. ‘You aren’t stopping, Felirin, not so soon. Better we freeze to a misplayed tune than abide our sobriety in silence.’

The bard feigned a yawn to hide his smile. ‘Arithon plays,’ he said in sly suggestion. ‘Why not ask him for a song?’

‘Arithon?’ Dakar puffed up his cheeks. ‘Play music?’ He darted a glance to either side; with Asandir off to check the picket-lines, he dared a whisper in conspiracy. ‘I’ll bet you silver he doesn’t.’

Felirin watched through peripheral vision and saw Arithon become utterly still. Lysaer sat up and took interest. ‘How much would you stake me?’ asked the bard.

The Mad Prophet laced his hands across his paunch. ‘Ten royals. Double as much if I’m wrong.’

Felirin chuckled, and still smiling, extended his instrument toward the cloaked figure to his left. ‘Indulge me. Give us a tune.’

Arithon returned a dry chuckle. ‘I’ll establish your mastery by contrast,’ he threatened. But Felirin had plotted to a nicety: after days of unmerited provocation, Arithon took his chance to humble Dakar.

His movements as he lifted the soundboard to his shoulder were recognizably reverent. Arithon poised tentative fingers, sounded a shower of practised harmonics, and found an interval off. He corrected the pitch, neatly and precisely. When he looked up, his eyes were laughing.

Dakar muttered something stinging concerning close-mouthed brigands who betrayed a comrade to wasted silver. Lysaer politely held back comment, and Felirin silently congratulated his powers of intuitive perception. Then all three of them lost track of surface thoughts as Arithon started to play.

The first chords rang across the firelit dell with a power of sheer captivation. Arithon tested and quickly found the instrument’s mettle; at once he broke his opening into an intricate theme that threaded, major to minor, in haunting sweeps across keys. By then no one remembered this magic had been instigated by an interchange of grudges and a bet.

Startled into rapt concentration, Felirin realized he had discovered a treasure. Whoever Arithon was, whatever his origins and his purpose in accompanying a sorcerer, he had been born with the natural gift to render song. There were rough patches in his fingering and fretwork that could be smoothed over with schooling; skilled guidance could ease some awkwardness in his phrasing. His voice lacked experience and tempering. But even through such flaws, the bard could appreciate his raw brilliance. With Lysaer and Dakar, his heart became transported from the discomforts of a drafty campsite and led on a soaring flight of emotion as a tale of two lovers unfolded like a jewel in the firelight.

Arithon stilled the strings at the end, and the spell shattered.

‘Young man,’ the bard demanded. ‘Play again.’

Arithon shook his head. ‘Collect your winnings from Dakar.’ If he had regrets, they stayed invisible as he slipped the instrument back into the lap of its owner. ‘Your lyranthe is very fine. She plays herself.’

‘That’s foolishness!’ Felirin reached out more demandingly than he intended, and caught hold of Arithon’s sleeve. The wrist beneath his touch was trembling. To ease what he took for self-consciousness, the bard added, ‘You’re gifted enough to apprentice.’

Arithon shook his head and moved to disengage, but Felirin’s grip tightened angrily. ‘How dare you waste such rare talent? Can’t you accept your true calling?’

Green eyes flashed up, and almost – only Lysaer could recognize it – Arithon drew breath for rebuttal in the same vicious style he had used at his trial by Amroth’s council. Then confusion seemed to flicker behind his eyes. The Master looked away. He worked gently free of the bard’s fingers. ‘Daelion turns the Wheel. One cannot always have the choice.’

He arose, quietly determined to retire, and managed to avoid Asandir, returned from his check on the horses.

The bard turned his puzzlement on the sorcerer. ‘What did the lad mean by that?’

Asandir sat on the log that the Master had just left vacant and settled his dark cloak around his knees. ‘That these are troubled times for all of us, my friend. Arithon has the gift, none can doubt. But music cannot be his first calling.’

Dakar suggested hopefully that spirits could ease the most wretched of life’s disappointments. His quip was ignored. No one inclined toward light heartedness. Felirin abandoned the fireside to pack away his lyranthe, followed by the crestfallen prophet. Only Lysaer lingered. Aware of the steel beneath Asandir’s stillness, and unwarmed by the wind-fanned embers by his feet, the s’Ilessid recalled his half-brother’s reaction to a past, insensitive query. ‘Never to go back to Karthan’ Arithon had said in unresponsive wish to kill the subject. Lent fresh perspective by tonight’s discovery, his half-brother shared insight into a misery that no heroic calling could assuage. Some men had no use for the responsibilities of power and renown. The coming quest to suppress the Mistwraith that restored meaning to Lysaer’s life became a curse and a care for Arithon, whose gifted love for music must be sidelined.

Morning came. Hunched against a wind that whined through tossing branches, the party passed into the foothills of Tornir Peaks. The great trees of Westwood thinned in concert with the soil, and the road wound between stripped, rock-crowned promontories sliced by stony gullies. Sleet had fallen during the night, and the slate paving was icy in patches, treacherous even at a walk. Arithon led his flighty dun by the bridle. Lysaer flanked him on foot, while Felirin took a turn in the chestnut’s saddle.